1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a method and a medium for rendering a document written into hypertext markup language (HTML), and more particularly, to a method and a medium for rendering an HTML document to a web browser in which a web server properly converts the HTML document according to a user""s computing environment and renders the converted result to the web browser.
2. Prior Art
Generally, the Internet is a kind of computer network, that is, a world-wide network of computers or servers for sharing information about education, economy, trade, etc. Computers connected to the Internet use TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) as a standard protocol to communicate with one another, or any other networks. The TCP/IP divides the information obtained via the Internet into smaller pieces called packets. These packets are each numbered and are labelled with destination addresses, so as to be forwarded to the destination. That is, the packets are stamped with information concerning where the packets are from, where they go, and how many packets there are in total, and then are sent to the designation. After the packets arrive at the destination, they are reassembled.
These days WWW (World Wide Web: hereinbelow referred to as xe2x80x9cThe Webxe2x80x9d) is the most popular information service provider on the Internet, and allows graphic information and sound information as well as text information to be presented and exchanged.
One of the significant features of the Web is providing information in the form of xe2x80x9chypertextxe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9chypermediaxe2x80x9d. The term xe2x80x9chypertextxe2x80x9d means text information that includes links connected to other online information therein and the term xe2x80x9chypermediaxe2x80x9d extends the concept of hypertext to other forms of information, including images, sounds and even motion images. Therefore, a user reading a hypermedia document clicks one of the links embedded in the document on the screen so as to receive a new document in a desired web site specified by URL (Universal Resource Locator).
The Web also adopts a client-server system as other internet services do, but differs from the conventional client-server applications, where a connection between the client and the server is maintained as long as the client is active. A web client (hereinafter referred to as a xe2x80x9cweb browserxe2x80x9d) and a web server are kinds of application programs, and exchange data through a standard protocol. HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol), one of the standard protocols, is used to communicate web documents of hypertext- and hypermedia-structures between web clients and web servers. Web documents are created using HTML and are generally ASCII texts with tags. Tags are commands inserted in the texts to present texts on a monitor screen or jump to other web documents.
FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating a transmission path between a web browser and a web server. A web browser 110 initiates a request for a HTML document resident in a web site specified by URL. to a web server 120. The web server 120 then obtains, and supplies the web browser 110 with, the desired HTML data. The web browser 110 displays the supplied document on user""s display devices in an appropriate format.
Here, the HTML documents in a site specified by URL, provided to the web browser 110 by the web server 120 are transmitted without any modification, taking no consideration of users"" various computing environments, that is, irrespectively of whether or not the user""s computer is equipped with a mouse, a speaker or a keyboard.
However, when a user is under a limited computing environment; for example, when a user has a computer system having no speaker, the user cannot listen to the phonetical information included in the HTML documents.
Therefore, the information contained in the HTML document supplied by a web server 120 would be useless to a user if the user cannot gain access thereto due to a limited computing environment, which causes a mere waste in data transmission time and an increase in the amount of web traffic because of the transmission of the data unavailable.
It is thus an object of the invention to provide a method and a medium for rendering a document to a browser of a user, according to user""s computing environments.
The object of the present invention can be accomplished by providing a method for rendering a document to a browser by a server, the document rendering method comprising the steps of: the browser requesting a predetermined document to the server and at the same time transmitting user""s computing environmental information to the server; the server evaluating the user""s computing environmental information received from the browser; the server converting the requested document according to the evaluated user""s computing environmental information; and the server transmitting the converted document to the browser.
It is preferable that the computing environmental information is included in a HTTP header.
It is preferable that the method further includes the step of making an appointment for communicating the user""s computing environmental information between the server and the browser.
It is more preferable that the method further includes the steps of: the server requesting user""s computing environmental information to a new browser, in the case that the new browser makes no appointment with the server for communicating user computing environmental information with each other; and the browser transmitting the user""s computing environmental information to the server based on the request.
The method is effective when it further includes the steps of: the browser displaying a fill-in form for requesting a user to fill the user""s computing environmental information therein when the server requests the user""s computing environmental information; and the server transmitting the computing environmental information filled in by the user to the server.
The object of the present invention can also be accomplished by providing a computer readable medium for rendering a document to a browser by a server on a computer network, the computer readable medium comprising: program code means for requesting a predetermined document and at the same time transmitting user""s computing environmental information to said server, at said browser; program code means for evaluating the computing environmental information received from said browser, at said server; program code means for converting said requested document according to the evaluated user""s computing environmental information, at said server; and program code means for transmitting said converted document to said browser, at said server.
It is preferable that the computing environmental information is included in a hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) header.